It was as a Carlton footballer that White first achieved some
notoriety in the late 1990s. But more recently it's been his
directing skills that have caused ripples, with the success of his
self-financed debut short film, A Black & White
World.

Starring Skithouse's Scott Brennan, Isabella Dunwill
and former Playschool regular Benita Collings, the
nine-minute A Black & White World combines
silent-movie stylings with animation and modern blue screen acting,
as it follows the story of a Buster Keatonesque black and white
character (played by Brennan), who discovers colour and sound for
the first time.

Although A Black & White World failed to feature in
the recent Melbourne International Film Festival, it has just been
screened at Colorado's prestigious Telluride Festival, and is
screening at this week's Palm Springs Short Film Festival, the
influential Manhattan Short Film Festival, and next week at
Canada's Calgary Film Festival.

"The last month has been a total spin out," says White, 29, who
is in New York this week.

At Telluride, his film was one of only six short films featured,
and it's one of 12 in this week's Manhattan program, which gets 166
screenings across the country before the grand finale in New York
on Sunday.

The recognition has helped smooth over the disappointment of
missing out on a showing at MIFF. "We pretty much made the film
with getting accepted by Melbourne in mind, so when it failed to
get a showing we were really disappointed," he says.

"We put in all that time and effort and we were starting to
doubt ourselves and the film. The fact it's done well overseas has
made me rethink everything. It's really open my eyes to the
possibilities."

White played 44 games for the Blues as a long-bounding utility
from 1997 to 2001. Infamously, he collided with an umpire in a
match against Adelaide and knocked himself out. "I hit him running
flat out and don't remember anything else. The funny part was there
was absolutely no issue over it at all with the AFL, probably
because I came off worse than the umpire."

But it was White's stint at the Blues that helped launch his
career in film. "I started watching films as a release from
football," he explains. "Sometimes we'd have two training sessions
in a day so there was plenty of time in between."

Unsurprisingly, not many others at Princes Park shared his
passion for cinema.

"There were a few of us that would talk about movies and stuff
like that but I don't think they were as obsessed as I was. Fraser
Brown would often ask me, 'you still doing that video shit?' "